Documenting Your Code You document your code by putting Natural Docs content in the comments. Before we go through all the specifics, here’s an example right off the bat so you have an idea of what it looks like. Here’s your code: /* Function: Multiply Multiplies two integers and returns the result. */ int Multiply (int x, int y) { return x * y; }; And here’s what appears in your output: Multiply
Multiplies two integers and returns the result. Here’s a more elaborate example. This is overkill for this particular function, but you get the idea. /* Function: Multiply Multiplies two integers. Parameters: x - The first integer. y - The second integer. Returns: The two integers multiplied together. See Also: <Divide> */ int Multiply (int x, int y) { return x * y; };
Not too scary, huh? Notice the comments are just as readable as the output. No tags littered about, and the structure is very natural. This was one of the goals of Natural Docs. Anyway, on to the details. Comments There is no special comment style for Natural Docs. You just embed Natural Docs topics into regular comments, and it’s pretty tolerant as far as style goes. You can use multi-line comments or single line comments strung together. The only requirement is that the comments are alone on a line. Comments appearing on the same lines as code are ignored. /* Function: Multiply */ // // Function: Multiply // Note that when stringing single-line comments together, blank lines that you want to include in the documentation must start with the comment symbol as well. If a line is completely blank, it’s considered the end of the comment and thus the end of the Natural Docs topic. Natural Docs can also handle comment boxes and horizontal lines. It doesn’t matter what symbols they use or how thick the lines are. The boxes don’t need to be closed on the right side, and they can have different symbols for the edges and corners. /********************* * Function: Multiply * *********************/ // +--------------------+ // | Function: Multiply | // +--------------------+ /*========================================================== ||| Function: Multiply ||| ------------------ ||| Multiplies two integers together and returns the result. ===========================================================*/ The only lines it doesn’t support are ones that use different symbols or are broken by spaces. // -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- // |: This comment box is just too fancy. :| // |: - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - :| // |: Not that a sane person would actually use it. :| // -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- Text Files Alternately, documentation can be included in text files. Any file with a .txt extension appearing in the source tree will be scanned for Natural Docs topics. It will be treated the same as a source file, meaning it will appear in the menu, its topics will be in the indexes, and its topics can be linked to from anywhere in the documentation. The only difference is you don’t need comment symbols. This method is convenient for documenting file formats, configuration settings, the general program architecture, or anything else that isn’t directly tied to a source file. Topics As you may have guessed, a topic in Natural Docs starts with a “ The types of keywords are described below, and there are many synonyms for each one. Your best bet is to just use what each topic is rather than to memorize a set of keywords, since the chances are good that Natural Docs does in fact have it for a keyword.
Look at the list of synonyms and you’ll see that you can pretty much use whatever word is most natural when describing the topic. Formatting and Layout As you saw in the more elaborate example, you can apply additional formatting and layout to your Natural Docs content, all in ways that will appear very natural in the source code. Paragraphs First of all, you break paragraphs by leaving blank lines between them. So we have this in our content: The first paragraph blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah. The second paragraph blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah. and we get this in our output: The first paragraph blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah. The second paragraph blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah. Bold and Italics You can apply bold to a stretch of text by surrounding it with asterisks. You can apply underlining by surrounding it with underscores instead. With underlining, it doesn’t matter if you use an underscore for every space between words or not; they’ll be converted to spaces if you do. Some *bold text* and some _underlined text_ and yet _more_underlined_text_. Some bold text and some underlined text and yet more underlined text. Headings You can add headings to your output just by ending a line with a colon and having a blank line above it. Some text before the heading. Heading: Some text under the heading. Some text before the heading. HeadingSome text under the heading. You must have a blank line above the heading or it will not work. You can skip the blank after it but not before. Bullet Lists You can add bullet lists by starting a line with a dash, an asterisk, an o, or a plus. Bullets can have blank lines between them if you want, and subsequent lines don’t have to be indented. You end a list by skipping a line and doing something else. - Bullet one. - Bullet two. Bullet two continued. - Bullet three. Some text after the bullet list. o Spaced bullet one. o Spaced bullet two. Spaced bullet two continued. o Spaced bullet three. Some text after the spaced bullet list.
Some text after the bullet list.
Some text after the spaced bullet list. Definition Lists You can add a definition list by using the format below, specifically “text space dash space text”. Like bullet lists, you can have blank lines between them if you want, subsequent lines don’t have to be indented, and you end the list by skipping a line and doing something else. First - This is the first item. Second - This is the second item. This is more of the second item. Third - This is the third item. This is more of the third item.
Remember that with definition lists, if the parent topic is “list” or one of its synonyms, each entry is a symbol and can be linked to just as if it had its own topic. Code and Text Diagrams Finally, you can add example code or text diagrams by starting each line with >, |, or :. : a = b + c; > +-----+ +-----+ > | A | --> | B | > +-----+ +-----+ > | > +-----+ > | C | > +-----+ a = b + c; +-----+ +-----+ | A | --> | B | +-----+ +-----+ | +-----+ | C | +-----+ For long stretches, this may be too tedious. You can start a code section by placing “(start code)” or just “(code)” alone on a line. You end it with either “(end code)” or just “(end)”. Remember that they must be the only things present on that line to work. (start code) if (x == 0) { DoSomething(); } return x; (end) if (x == 0) { DoSomething(); } return x; You can use “example”, “diagram”, or “table” in addition to “code”. Just use whatever’s appropriate. Always flexible, you can also substitute “begin” for “start” and “finish” or “done” for “end” if you want. Linking Linking is the one place where Natural Docs has some negative effect on the readability of the comments. Of course, the alternative would be to automatically guess where links should be, but systems that do that typically pepper your sentences with unintentional links to functions called “is” or “on”. However, the Natural Docs syntax is still as minimal as possible. Simply surround any symbol you want to link to with angle brackets. Natural Docs will keep track off all the symbols and where they are defined, so you don’t need to use HTML-like syntax or remember what file anything is in. Also, if the link can’t be resolved to anything, Natural Docs leaves the angle brackets in the output so if something wasn’t intended to be a link (such as “ Let's link to function <Multiply>. Let’s link to function Multiply. If the target has a summary sentence, hovering over the link will give it to you as a tooltip. If the target is a function or variable, it will also give you its prototype. You can try it above. How do you define symbols? Well, every Natural Docs topic defines a symbol corresponding to its name. If you use a list topic, every item in any of its definition lists is also a symbol. Symbols can have scope. All symbols defined after a class topic until the next class or section topic are considered part of that class (except file topics, which are always global.) They are linked to using any of the three most common class/member notations: Also note that when linking to functions, it doesn’t matter if you include empty parenthesis or not. Both Links and symbols are case sensitive, regardless of whether the language is or not. Finally, to make the documentation easier to write and easier to read in the source file, you can include plurals and possessives inside the angle brackets. In other words, you don’t have to use awkward syntax like URLs and E-Mail You can also link to URLs and e-mail addresses in your comments. It will detect them automatically, but you can also put them in angle brackets if you like. Visit <http://www.website.com> or send messages to email@address.com. Visit http://www.website.com or send messages to em@addre ss.com. ail E-mail addresses are protected in a way that should avoid spam crawlers. Although the link above looks and acts like a regular link (try it) the HTML code actually looks like this: <a href="#" onClick="location.href='mai' + 'lto:' + 'em' + 'ail' + '@' + 'addre' + 'ss.com'; return false;"> em<span style="display: none">.nosp@m.</span>ail <span>@</span> addre<span style="display: none">.nosp@m.</span>ss.com </a> Page Titles Natural Docs automatically determines the page title as follows:
This should be enough for most people. However, if you don’t like the page title Natural Docs has chosen for you, add a “ Summaries are automatically generated for every file, class, and section. You don’t have to do anything special to get them. There are two things you may want to keep in mind when documenting your code so that the summaries are nicer. The first is that they use the first sentence in the topic as the description, so long as it’s plain text and not something like a bullet list. It will also appear in the tooltip whenever that topic is linked to. The second is that you may want to use group topics to divide long lists and make the summaries is easier to navigate. You don’t need to provide a description, just adding a “ Here’s an example summary. Note that as before, when you hover over a link, you’ll get the prototype and summary line as a tooltip. Summary
Indexes Natural Docs will generate indexes for your project automatically, both general and by type. If you don’t want them, just delete them from the menu and they won’t come back unless you allow them to. That’s It! Here’s our overkill example again, just to refresh your memory. Visit our website to see examples of what a complete project’s output would look like. Important: Make sure you read the traps page so you don’t make some of the more common mistakes. It’s better now than trying to figure out why it isn’t working later. /* Function: Multiply Multiplies two integers. Parameters: x - The first integer. y - The second integer. Returns: The two integers multiplied together. See Also: <Divide> */ int Multiply (int x, int y) { return x * y; }; |